


Oblivion

by JJPalmer



Category: Battlestar Galactica, Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-29
Updated: 2017-07-29
Packaged: 2018-12-08 14:28:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11648475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JJPalmer/pseuds/JJPalmer
Summary: Laura is dying, but she won't surrender...not now, not ever. She will fight.





	Oblivion

**Author's Note:**

> I don't own them.

She was dying. She knew it, she could feel it. She could feel the cancer growing into her, she could feel it spreading out, she could feel it slowly eating her. 

And it was painful, too painful. The sleepless nights, the respiratory failure, the trembling so strong that she couldn’t get out of the sickbay bed anymore…  
And the drugs didn’t help, they took off also that bit of clearness of mind she needed to fight against the disease. She almost didn’t have the strenght to stay awake for more than about twenty minutes, she had difficulty to speak and had serious vision problems.

She lived absorbed in the oblivion, almost like floating in an endless cloud. Sometimes she managed to escape, but then she was sucked again in… and she wasn’t strong enough to oppose it.

“Laura…”

When that deep voice called her, she felt like a gust of wind on her face. In her mind she saw herself swimming in the cloud to reach that distant voice. She was swimming and swimming and swimming…

“Laura, can you hear me?”

Then she started hearing sounds and voices more distinctly. She heard the “bip” uttered from the cardiac monitor she was attached to, she heard those present’s voices. Her mind was still obscured, but she could figure out whose these voices were: one was that of doc Cottle and the other… it was Bill’s.

“Mmh…” she moaned, feeling suddenly Bill’s grip on her cold hand.

“Hey Laura, I’m here, get up…”

She saw a small opening in which she could thread her way in the cloud, she saw the blue of the sky. She dived into the blue, into the air, to reach Bill, to reach that life that was slowly slipping through her fingers.

She opened her eyes abruptly, gasping to get her breath back, almost like she had just been swimming in apnea.  
She felt the leathery hand of Bill placed over hers.  
She tried to focus on the images. She winked her eyes, while the Admiral took her glasses from the bedside table and put them on her nose gently. 

She smiled weakly, while she finally managed to see her Bill sitting near the bed.

“It’s good… to see you…” she murmured, trying to squeeze his hand.

She glanced at the doctor, who was standing behind the Admiral. Cottle nodded ruefully, bowing his head, and went away, closing the curtain’s flaps, that gave the President a bit of privacy.

“You too, Laura… I missed you.” he answered, gazing on her.

Looking at him, she could feel all the concern and the pain he was feeling seeing her like that, cuddled up under the sheets, dying and frail, like a helpless animal.  
She opened her mouth to comfort him, but she closed it back immediately with a sigh, not kwowing what to say.

“Do you want me to read you something?”

She was tempted to accept, but if Bill had started reading with that warm and deep voice, she would have fallen asleep again, rocked by its rhythm.  
And she didn’t want to sleep.  
Not now. Not when Bill was with her.

She shook her head, feeling the scarf she was wearing rubbing her skin.

“I want…” she swallowed, her mouth dry “I want you, here…”

She released his hand and patted softly on the bed, inviting him to join her.

He got up, with that sad smile on his lips. He put down the book he was holding, "Searider Falcon", on the chair and approached the bed.

“I’m afraid there’s not enough room for me.” he said, scratching his head.

Laura tried to shift, making an effort to raise herself, but fell back onto the pillow, groaning and trembling. She blinked her eyes several times and when she focused on him again, she saw all the pain in Bill’s eyes, so sincere and unable to lie. For a second she thought that maybe he was suffering almost like her.

Then she saw him bending down onto her, she saw him passing an arm behind her neck and the other under her skinny legs, scooping her up, apparently without any labour. She pulled herself closer to his chest, her cheek pressed against his uniform, while Bill moved her gently, keeping attention to the tubes that connected her to the monitors.  
When he left her again on the bed, there was enough room for both.

She smiled when Bill lay down next to her and turned over, leaning on his elbow to look at her. Their faces were so close they could almost touch.

Bill felt like a pang in his heart, as Laura curled up against him, burying her face in his chest, inhaling his familiar scent. He tried hard to hold back the tears, he couldn’t cry, he had to be strong for her too, now.  
He wrapped her waist with his free arm… almost like trying to protect her from the external world… even though she was being killed by something hidden safely inside her, in her chest. The real war was inside her, not out of Galactica.

“Are you nervous?”

Her voice brought him back to reality. 

“Mmh?”

“Your heart…” she whispered “is beating so fast…”

He felt Laura shuddering in his tight embrace, while he was rubbing her back.

“It’s all your fault, it’s your closeness that takes that effect on me.” he smirked, trying to be convincing.

Laura giggled a little, raising her face to find his dark blue eyes staring at her.  
Bill smiled, focusing only on her green eyes, grew dim by the medicines and the suffering, but still lively and sparkling. His eyes softened as he slided towards her.  
Their noses were brushing, when he captured her lips in a kiss. He leaned against her, feeling her trembling and moaning against him.

He couldn’t tell how badly he wanted her to feel better! He would have been willing to take her place, he would have played the ill person’s role, so that she could end her sufferings… and see the Earth, her dream.

Slowly, almost like asking for her permission, Bill parted her lips to find her tongue. She responded to the kiss, trying to control her trembling, vainly.  
When they parted, searching for air, Laura lay down on the bed again, with her head on the pillow.  
But Bill didn’t escape the tears that had formed in Laura’s eyes when she turned her head, to avoid his eyes, stifling a groan.

“Laura don’t cry, please…” he whispered, awfully grieved, while caressing her cheek, hollow and pale, cold under his gentle touch.

The brightness of her eyes was even more accentuated by her dark bags, when she looked back at him. 

“Bill…” she murmured, trying to control herself “Bill, I’m sorry… for this situation… I would… would have met you before…”

Her voice broke up.

He repressed again the urge to cry, while caressing her face and wiping her tears away.

“It’s not your fault… and the most important thing is that we met, at least… right?”

She nodded, sniffing.

She felt the necessity to sleep, the sedatives were taking their effect. But she was afraid of sleeping, she feared the fact that she wouldn’t be able to see her Bill again.

“Bill…” she moaned, with her eyes closed.

“Tell me” he answered, his hand resting on her skinny cheekbone, still wet.

“Stay with me until… untill I don’t fall asleep…please”

“Sure. I’ll be right here.” he replied, placing a sweet kiss on her forehead.

She smiled, feeling the heat coming from the body of the man next to her.  
But she still had something to say, before getting again to the oblivion.

“Admiral…” she breathed

“Yes, Madame President?”

“I… I love you…”

He felt his heart aching.  
The unbelievable amount of love he held in his heart for her, had been there ever since they’d first met at the meeting on Galactica, even if he never admitted it, neither to her nor himself, but it wasn’t until they became close friends that she’d managed to unearth his deeply buried feeling for her, with her beauty, her kindness, her strenght and determination… and her smile, her beautiful smile.

“I love you too Laura, more than anything.”

She felt the strenght abandoning her, she was being pulled back inside that endless cloud. She didn’t struggle to resist, she wanted to save that bit of strenght she had for the future, for the moment they found a viable planet.  
She wanted to be there for Bill, to prepare him to a future without her.

“Laura, rest now… I’ll be there for you.”

She nodded in agreement, while falling asleep.

She would continue to fight.

To fight for herself.

But especially for him.

She fell asleep, while a tear furrowed the cheek of the Admiral of the Colonial Fleet.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not english so I'm sorry for all the grammatical errors! This is my first attempt to publish something, so let me know what you think!  
> Hugs,  
> J.J.


End file.
